A nuclear agency is investigating reports of radiation poisoning among Russian troops at Chernobyl.

As Russian troops pulled out of Ukraine’s shuttered Chernobyl nuclear plant 5 weeks after seizing it, a world nuclear watchdog company is trying into reviews that a number of the troopers are experiencing radiation poisoning.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company’s director common, was scheduled to talk at a information convention on Friday afternoon on the company’s headquarters in Vienna after assembly with senior authorities officers from Ukraine and Russia.

Russian troops left the plant and the close by metropolis of Slavutych on Thursday, in response to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-run vitality firm. Three convoys of troopers who left the positioning have been headed north towards Belarus, the I.A.E.A. mentioned in an announcement.

The company mentioned it was working to substantiate native information media reviews that Russian troopers have been leaving the positioning as a result of some had been uncovered to excessive ranges of radiation there.

The company additionally mentioned it will ship specialists and security and safety provides to Ukraine to make sure security at Chernobyl, the place the worst nuclear catastrophe in historical past occurred in 1986.

A Pentagon spokesman, John F. Kirby, solid doubt on the reviews that Russian soliders had suffered radiation illness, saying in a information convention on Thursday that “at this early stage” the troop motion seemed to be “a bit of this bigger effort to refit and resupply and never essentially accomplished due to well being hazards or some type of emergency or a disaster at Chernobyl.”

Russia seized the decommissioned plant early in its invasion of Ukraine, elevating considerations about radiation ranges and safeguarding on the website, the place spent gasoline nonetheless requires round the clock upkeep.